Babylonian culinary tablets (Yale Collection)
Tablillas culinarias babilónicas (Colección Yale)
- Date
- c. 1750 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Southern Mesopotamia (probably Larsa), Iraq
- Credited to
- Scribes of Old Babylon
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Three cuneiform tablets in the Yale Babylonian Collection record dozens of recipes for broths, stews and fowl, with ingredients and cooking steps. They are the oldest known cooking texts.
The texts, studied by Jean Bottéro, list ingredients but omit quantities and timings, being meant for already trained cooks. Exact provenance is unknown; they are attributed to southern Mesopotamia.
What it led to
- cooking as a written genre (recipe books)
- documentation of Mesopotamian palace cuisine
- a source for reconstructing ancient ingredients and techniques